With computer and Internet use forming an ever greater part of day to day life, security exploits and cyber attacks directed to stealing and destroying computer resources, data, and private information are becoming an increasing problem. For example, “malware”, or malicious software, is a general term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive computer programs. Malware is, for example, used by cyber attackers to disrupt computer operations, to access and to steal sensitive information stored on the computer or provided to the computer by a user, or to perform other actions that are harmful to the computer and/or to the user of the computer. Malware may include computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, rootkits, keyloggers, spyware, adware, rogue security software, and other malicious programs and malware may be formatted as executable files, dynamic link libraries (DLLs), scripts, and/or other types of computer programs.
Malware authors or distributors (“adversaries”) frequently disguise or obfuscate malware in attempts to evade detection by malware-detection or -removal tools. Consequently, it is time consuming to determine if a program is malware.